OnwardMobility is lifeless, and so are its plans to launch a 5G BlackBerry telephone | Engadget

There’s will not be an enormous revival for BlackBerry telephones anytime quickly. OnwardMobility, the Austin-based startup that introduced its plans to launch a 5G BlackBerry machine with a bodily keyboard again in 2020, is shutting down. The firm posted a discover of its closure on its website, making it clear that it will not be continuing with the event of the smartphone. This comes a month after it responded to folks asking in regards to the standing of the venture with a weblog put up entitled “contrary to popular belief, we are not dead.”

While OnwardMobility did not expound on the rationale behind its closure, Android Police reported just a few days in the past that its license to make use of the BlackBerry identify had been canceled. Apparently, BlackBerry needs to distance itself from its previous as a smartphone producer after it offered off its remaining cell patents for $600 million to start with of February. OnwardMobility reportedly determined to not push by way of with the event of a brand new smartphone with out the BlackBerry identify, particularly because it will not be straightforward getting into the market with an ongoing international element scarcity. 

OnwardMobility was by no means in a position to launch photos of the telephone it was growing, but it surely was reportedly going to take design cues from the BlackBerry Priv. As Android Police notes, the Priv was BlackBerry’s first Android telephone and the one one it designed in-house earlier than it outsourced the manufacturing of its cell units to TCL. If BlackBerry, in its present kind, really does need to distance itself from its previous, then we would by no means see a brand new BlackBerry-branded telephone once more.